Jose, Maria, and Alexa

“We want Alexa to be able to work in an office one day. She is our first born daughter, and we had her after immigrating to the US for a better life. In Mexico, we didn’t have much work and life was hard. We like life here, but we face some difficulties too. When we first arrived, we didn’t speak English. It’s hard to find a job when you don’t speak the language, but we managed to get jobs as a construction worker in the city and as a cleaning lady. But it wasn’t easy because sometimes we couldn’t even understand the directions from our bosses. We had learned English when we came here. Maria went to classes for about three months, but the teacher spoke Spanish, so she didn’t learn much. I just learned on the job. Now that my English has gotten better, I try to help other Spanish speakers when they first come to my job. Often, the Americans will laugh at them when they try to learn. I tell the Americans to stop laughing. They don’t understand how hard it is to adapt to a new country without knowing what people are saying to you. We want life to be different for our daughter. She is so smart and will be in the magnet program next year when she starts kindergarten. We know she’ll be able to achieve great things because of the life we created for her.” - Jose, Maria, and Alexa